Hey PMs, it's almost 2025 and we're still here. Yeah, AI didn't make us redundant. Ruthless bosses didn't make us redundant. Well, not all of us at least. We survived yet another year and are now looking into the next with a tiny bit of optimism.
I was re-reading my last year's "Christmas" post - it was all about the job market crisis and AI threat. But also it was about the resourcefulness of PMs - our ability to adapt to almost any situation and still find ways to bring value to our customers and organisations.
In 2024 things improved ever so slightly. The job market in the West is still tough for PMs and adjusted tech roles. People are still trying to understand AI and how it will change our professional and personal lives. The most clever of us are already using AI to be more efficient and to supercharge learning.
PM + AI
Largely this year, and certainly the following - AI trend will continue. From a curiosity for early adopters, it will turn into an essential tool for most of the "white collar" jobs. There won't be much choice whether to use it or not - those who won't use it will inevitably fall behind. The main question will be how to use AI in the best way for your work and career.Let's look at the typical PM responsibilities and how AI could help.
Discovery 50/50
When it comes to discovery we can split it into two big chunks - interacting with people and everything else. Interviews, workshops, observations, focus groups, surveys - all that is about people and should be done by PM. No matter how good AI can get, respect people by giving them your time, attention and empathy.You can gain that time for in-person interactions by offloading to AI other parts of product discovery. Market research, competitive intelligence, financial forecasting, data analysis - all that is much easier and faster with the help of AI. Sure you will need to proofread what you get from AI, but it would be much faster than doing the digging yourself.
Prioritisation 70/30 or 30/70
Prioritisation is probably the most impactful PM activity. There are always more ideas than resources to develop them. Those win who prioritise the best ideas in their particular context. AI could help with prioritisation and the exact degree of usefulness will depend on how much data you have and the quality of the data.For example, if all your ideas are properly estimated in terms of potential impact and effort - AI will be much more useful when prioritising. Otherwise, if you embark on a totally new journey where you don't know much about the challenge at hand and your own abilities - you'd have to do most of the prioritisation.
No matter what route you choose - don't discard your PM intuition. That's not something AI has, it is what makes you unique and valuable. Apply your taste, experience and ethics when making prioritisation decisions.
Delivery 20/80
At the building stage of product development, AI could be extremely useful. Offload backlog creation, sprint formation and progress reporting to automated systems to gain time for more strategic activities. You don't really need AI here, just intelligent enough tools that your team could use to the fullest.But make sure to be hands-on when it comes to accepting a product increment. Yes, AI can write your user stories and acceptance criteria. It can even test your software and find bugs. But it cannot spot when your product lacks that "magic" - something that is almost impossible to describe, a micro-animation, a bit of friendly unnecessary copy, an Easter egg... that something that separates a good product from a great product that delights customers.
Go to market 30/70
Introducing a new product to the market or announcing a major update are some of the most impactful PM activities. Usually at this stage, we collaborate with marketing, sales and now - AI. The variety of ways you can launch a product will depend on your industry, the nature of your product and of course your budget.AI could be a valuable partner in figuring out the best go-to-market strategy. For example, you can use AI to come up with various positioning statements. It could be used to bounce ideas from when writing creative messaging or press releases. Finally, it could even help you to create landing pages and other promotional materials.
Still, be sure to review the output of the AI and check if it captured your uniqueness. Maybe mix up things a little so your communication does not feel like everything else.
Growth 50/50
When it comes to growing your product - you need all the help you can get. AI can help you assess the effectiveness of your growth channels and tactics. It could suggest ways to optimise. It could bring relevant examples from other products that you might use when crafting your unique growth strategy.Growth used to be known as growth hacking because all the standard ways to get more customers are known and highly busy (competition is severe). So product people focused on finding non-obvious ways to grow their products. And we should keep doing it manually as AI won't be too helpful here for now. Partnerships, collaborations - all that are still the realm of people. Ads optimisation, content marketing - AI could handle it with your help.
Optimisation 30/70
Speaking about optimisation - that's where I have the most hope for AI to bring value to product managers. Hopefully, soon AI should be able to automatically find small improvement opportunities all over your product. It should run thousands of A/B tests, it should gather and analyse feedback, it should monitor and alert us about data trends.Your unique value in optimisation is to figure out big things. Because our products are used by people, we are uniquely positioned not only to understand what people are doing but why they are acting as they are. In other words, AI could bring us the what and partly the how, but we will need to add the why in order to make our products truly successful.
What should I do about AI as PM?
Definitely try it. Start gaining experience using these new AI systems because they are here to stay.Identify where you bring the most value and double down on that. There's no point in competing in AI in what it does best - find your unique niche.
Supercharge yourself with the help of AI. Whatever your goals are - get more time, get that promotion, learn new things - AI could be the tool to help.
No, AI will not replace you, but someone who uses AI can replace you if you don't embrace this new powerful technology. Happy New Year!